Tomato prices to stay high till Aug-end

Tomatoes have become the new onions. The flare-up in the price of the indispensable vegetable in recent months on disruption in supplies due to early arrival of the monsoon and incidence of pest attacks has soured consumer sentiment across the country.

In Delhi NCR, tomato prices were sold at ₹96-110 a kg on Tuesday. Safal, the subsidiary of Mother Dairy, was selling tomatoes at ₹96/kg, and online grocers BigBasket and Grofers at ₹99/kg and ₹98/kg, respectively. Desi tomatoes online were even more expensive at ₹105/kg.

In Mumbai, tomatoes were retailing at around ₹110/kg, in Kolkata at ₹99/kg, in Hyderabad at ₹108/kg, and in Bengaluru at ₹80-92/kg.

Prices are expected to stay firm in the near term, traders and officials said, hinting that consumers will likely get a respite only towards end-August when fresh supplies from key growing regions of Nashik and Kolar are expected.

While high prices are hurting retail consumers badly, even large buyers such as restaurants seem to be facing the brunt. A McDonald’s restaurant in Noida put up a sign telling its customers that owing to temporary unavailability of tomatoes, “we are unable to add tomatoes in various products.” The situation, it said, is expected to become stable soon.

The high prices have turned the vegetable into a precious commodity: there are reports of traders seeking armed protection for the stored tomatoes from markets in Madhya Pradesh.

With fresh tomatoes turning expensive, some consumers are switching over to processed puree. A 200-ml pack of tomato puree across brands costs ₹20-25, and a 1-kg pack about ₹85 in Delhi.

Restaurant chains, which typically source their supplies through annual contracts on pre-determined prices, are seen largely insulated from the sharp hike in prices, which have more than quadrupled over the past three months in major markets.

The early arrival of the monsoon across the country impacted the standing crop in Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh, among other States, leading to a decline in arrivals.

“Cooler weather suits tomato crop better. Both excess temperature as well as rains, which leads to rotting, are not good for the crop,” said Rohtas Kait, assistant professor at Chaudhary Devi Lal University, Sirsa.

The IMD has predicted a normal monsoon for the year. So far, the cumulative rainfall across the country as a whole has been 5 per cent surplus, with only the Peninsular region and North-East witnessing deficit rains.

Besides, the shrinkage in crop area last year in some parts of Maharashtra and Himachal has also affected market arrivals. “Prices were low in recent years, resulting in lower cultivation this year. Also, the crop was impacted by pest attacks this year,” said Prabhakar Harak, a tomato trader in Nashik.

Harak said prices are likely to stay high until the second week of August, after which they could come down with fresh arrivals.

In its crop outlook, RML Agtech said tomato supply is unlikely to improve in the near future. New crop will start arriving by the end of the next month, ahead of which prices are likely to remain firm.

In Karnataka’s Kolar region, scattered rains this year impacted the standing crop last month, hurting supplies. Transplanting of the tomato seedlings has begun, but the trend is sluggish. “Transplanting in the ongoing kharif season is 25-30 per cent of the total acreage. Only 14,200 acres of the 45,000 acres have been planted so far. The price trends may prompt more farmers to take up planting,” said Nagaraj, Joint Director, Karnataka Horticulture Department. He expects prices to come down over the next few weeks.

Drought over three successive years resulted in declining water table in the major tomato-growing districts of Kolar and Chikaballapur. This has impacted the planting of the vegetable. However, farmers in Kolar are bullish on tomato. “Tomato acreages could go up by 30-40 per cent this year,” said Abhilash T of Gold Farm, a start-up that provides outsourced services of farm implements in Kolar district.

The high prices have also impacted tomato exports. The export price to Dubai is around ₹60/kg, but farmers are getting ₹65/kg wholesale rate in the local market, Harak said.

(With inputs from Vishwanath Kulkarni in Bengaluru and Rahul Wadke in Mumbai.)

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